E 705 
.H282 



Qass. 
Book 




:Uztz. 





ADDRESS 



OF THE 



PRESIDENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 



AT 



ATLANTA, GEORGIA 

THURSDAY AFTERNOON 

OCTOBER 27, 1921 







WASHINGTON 
1921 







.■• ?*. 



UBHAHY Of CONGRESS 
DOCUMENT- ^.v.JION 



ADDRESS AT ATLANTA, OCTOBER 27, 1921. 



Fellow Americans: I can not tell you how glad I am to be here. 
to greet you men and women of Atlanta, of Georgia, and the South, 
and to receive this testimony of devotion to our common country. 
Be assured that, much as I crave, and wish to deserve, your good 
will, I shall not mistakenly assume that such a greeting as this is 
for me. or ever could he for any one man. I recognize it as the tribute 
which a great people pays to a constituted authority in its public 
life. It is the reflection of the spirit which makes our popularly 
governed institutions secure. But you will permit me to say, from 
my heart, that nowhere else do they do these tilings with quite the 
same zest and flavor and convincing enthusiasm which spice the 
hospitality of your wonderful South. As private citizen or public 
official, it has always been to me an especial pleasure to come to the 
South. As a young man 1 was very near indeed to becoming a resi- 
dent of the South anil a citizen of your neighboring State, Tennessee. 
Even for the sake id' paying a compliment, I shall not tell you I am 
entirely sorry I didn't come; it might imply a lack of appreciation 
for the somewhat notable kindnesses that have been extended to me 
by the people of my own State, operating in conjunction with a very 
impressive company of friends in other parts. 

To come to Georgia is to come to the heart of the South. To come 
to Georgia on this, of all days of the year — the birthday of Roose- 
velt — is to realize that the heart of the South throbs for all the 
Nation. To the making of that typical American of the new era 
went equally the wanner strains of the Old South and the sturdy 
stock that gave the Nation its Empire State. 

So it is good, in greeting you men and women of Georgia, to recall 
the career of that outstanding 'American who in his life, as in his 
lineage, taught us how much we arc prospered and exalted because 
of being united. And. coming thus among you, it is peculiarly, a 
satisfaction to speak from the shadow of the shaft which you have 
reared to the memory of one who taught a reunited nation its duties, 
its obligations, its possibilities. For 1 recall the thrill with which 
1 re, id. as a young man, the address of Henry W. Grady to the New 
England Club; that most famous oration. 1 think, of its generation; 
that inspiring call to a nation to awaken to itself, to understand 
that its yesterdaj was dead, its to-morro^ pregnant with magnificent 
opportunity. 

7 -•Vi]— 21 ( 3 ) 



1 



If ever one man was ordained to speak with the tongue of convic- 
tion and the voice of a great people, thai man was Grady. Gifted 
the poet's imagery, the seers wisdom, the plain man's humor, 
and the statesman's vision, he pretended to be neither poet, seer, nor 
statesman; he sought n<> public plan, but preferred the private post 
close to his people Bui someht n it was his t<> understand and inter- 
pret the longing of the Nation for a true and perfect reunion. 11. 
appraised the difficulty of i ing a new temple of concord and 

hope out of disappointment and sorrow incident to conflict, but lie 
-aw beneath the surface the hungering in develop a common inherit- 
ance, In' caughl the aspirations for a common glory. In- touched the 
chords <'l' sympathy which echoed the note of common rejoicing. 

W i i hi : . . aglow ami tongue inspired, lie felt it his duty to 
preach tin gospel of new understanding, and having uttered his 
new gospel at home, he came north, the evangel of a new day, ami 
made his New England speech. Since that night he has belonged 
not to \.. ' • rgia hut to the nation, to the truly reunited nation, 
of which, in hi- day, be was the foremost apostle and spoke-man. 

The South never had a i loyal or jealous -on: hut he saw. with 

in c\ e for wider scopes, that this people W a- not to lie divided. And 
he pi pel North ami South: the gospel of unity and 

common destiny; and when he died untimely, at :is years of age, the 
nation which so soon had learned to love him. bowed its head in a 
universal sorrow. Reading his passionate pleadings for a nation- 
wide understanding, I can not hut feel that he would have been 
content i ho did if he could have known how close that tie 

of c mou sorrow would bring the people for whom his life had 

the Labor of a supreme hue. 

lh.w strangely has destiny interwoven the parts in this drama •■!' 
a Nations restoration ! I ■■■ - inn year of I88fl that saw Grad} lain 
away with love's laurels on his proud and noble brow, saw another 
son of a mother of Georgia and the South entered in the career of 
national sen 1 it earl leod n It. following his 

impel - appeals political moral- at the Baltimore civil 

e con fen is appointed I Pi dent Harrison to the Civil 

on. and his national began. A -on of the 

and the South, but already adopted bj I he West, he had become 

out admirei of thai -on . <mh whom all the Nation had 

taken Hunk of them, you I ins, you men and 

Women of the whole South think ol in 

and tell m< would you wish to provide n '■ 

than ii iii i- \ on which they played their 

'li.i.' !! Foi genius* - such as 

you fui t afford a Cut ■ and 

'pent up I ■ 



The other day there caine into my hands a volume of the letters 
of a group of eminent Georgians of the Civil War and reconstruc- 
tion period. In the main, they represented the correspondence of 
Alexander II. Stephens. Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs, and Gov. 
Joe Brown. Only recently published, they proved fascinating read- 
ing' as I turned the pages and felt myself admitted to' the very 
inner thoughts which these leaders of the Confederacy were think- 
ing in the years immediately following the war. Especially was I 
interested in the extensive correspondence between these southern 
leaders and prominent men of the North, which was carried on at 
that priod. It was nothing less than astonishing to note how little 
of bitterness, of resentment, of hatred, and recalcitrance Mas mani- 
fested on either side. With almost no exception, they breathed the 
fine spirit of chivalry; of readiness to accept in whole heart and 
good, nature the arbitrament of the war. They held a flavor of 
something more than resignation, as if already the writers were 
realizing how fortunate it was that union should have been pre- 
served. They were all back in the harness, working for the restora- 
tion of their State, their people, their preserved country. They 
wrote thoughtful, earnest counsels as to the wiser policies in State 
and Nation, seeking always to make their friends in the North under- 
stand how complete and sincere was the South's acceptance of its 
place in the restored Union, how determined it was to contribute its 
utmost to a perfect national accord. At times they sounded the 
note of disappointment that the North seemed slow to accept their 
protestations as in complete good faith, and he assured that they 
could be dealt with in complete confidence, hut they were seldom 
impatient: they held their heads high, had no apologies to make for 
the past, but were looking clear-eyed to the future of indissoluble 
union. 

That was the spirit which made reconstruction, despite bun- 
gling and some exceptional manifestations of acerbity, on the whole 
so rapid and effective a process, when measured by like incidents in 
human history. They wanted to be taken back into full fellow-hip. 
"We would rather have one immigrant from the North than fifty 
from Europe," wrote one, a few years after Appomattox; and he 
urged his Northern friend to make the Northern people understand 
how welcome they would be. Not even the unreconstruetible hatred > i E 
Old Thad Stevens could maintain an effective front against such 
appeals as that. The North did come to you. with olive branch in- 
stead of sword; and you went to the North and AY est. and becamG 
full partners in making that new empire which together we carved 
out of the trans-Missouri wilderness; and now truly there can be 
descried no sectional division of this land. 



Recently, passing in a motor car through a section where his 
torical interest has inspired the setting ol tablets marking M 
and Dixon's line, I beard a group of highly intelligent people 
quarreling about its geography, half of them insisting that it didnt 
belong there at all, but sunn- hundreds of miles farther >«>utl» ! 
Neither the atlases nor 1 1 jo election returns give us nowadays a 
dependable basis for judgment of what is South and what North; 
we have been politically annexing you when you were not politi- 
cally taking us into camp— and we have been socially, industrially, 
economically invading and seizing as much of your imperial oppor- 
tunities as we could get >>m- hands pn. We have been pooling our 
capital with your brains and resources, and both sides earning _ 
dividend-, on the transaction, and all the time jointly making a 
greater republic. 

It would lie hard to find a more fitting platform from which to 
preai h a gospel of confidence, courage, and determination than is 
afforded here in your wonderful .it;, of Atlanta. In one of his 
speeches I think it was the one at tie Sew England Society din 
ner Henry Grady, turning to Gen. Sherman, who .~.tt near him, 
observed that Gen. Sherman was "considered an aide man in our 
parts, though some people think he is a kind of careless man about 
tire." That grim joke contained the spirit of the South, the courage 
of Atlanta, the eternal \isi.,n .if the brighter side that is SO natural 
to you people of the land id' sunshine. One who comes to your 
metropolis of to-day can not but realize how useless to attempt, with 
lire and sword, to discourage such a people as this, to extinguish their 
enthusiasm, to daunt then- matchless courage. What chance is there 

t0 keep down a peuple who. whell VOU buMI the,!' llOUSe, leal 111 lt> 

place a palace of marble; and when amid the passions <>\ wai 
drive them in thousands from their home, return in ten- of thou 
-ami- to build it into a metropolis) The reason why the South re- 
covered * ■ soon from the war was that it ,\a- made up of just that 

sort of | pie, Hut ! to aj . 

,n of that conflict, t Vnrth hn esire to desl roy, li 

ie combat for under-iai . and 

a battle to 'i \i-k of tin int. in which 

• lice to day. 
It has seemed to me, many times in the |»ei World War 

elided, that the World at i ell let u» -Imw ll the n, 

whicl ight througl nited and restored An, 

i . w ill io get dow ii to work, i 

and i ,■ have amol tl DTC, OUt of the i that 

our war wrought, a country in which we maj fitlj take the pride 
evei \ ■ i ii f( 



Who would have ours less than the great, rich, progressive, power- 
ful, and enlightened America which we justly boast to-day? Who 
would have it less a figure in the world than it has been in these 
years of crisis and disaster? What friend of civilization, of Chris- 
tianity, of human advancement, would have wished our part less than 
it has been? Who among us all is not proud that we were able to 
participate very notably in the rescue of humanity in the struggle 
which menaced its very existence? Who would have us relinquish 
now our service for a better civilization? 

Surely, we will go on, developing the nationality that has given 
us faith and weight and power for the tasks of the past, knowing 
there are other tasks in the future which will demand the utmost we 
can contribute to them. AVe have, learned, along with the rest, that 
mankind must go forward or backward as a whole; it is not to be 
expected that some sectors shall advance as others retire. Either the 
race will advance or it will retrograde ; it will not stand still. 

It has had a tremendous lesson, and I am one of those who firmly 
believe that this lesson will be analyzed, tested, scrutinized, and 
made to afford us at last a direction for future effort. It is not 
possible to believe that all the lessons of all the yesterdays will have 
gone in vain. The increase of education, of the studious habit, of 
social consciousness, can not but bring us nearer to agreement about 
some few fundamentals. 

I believe, for instance, that every family which has lost a mem- 
ber in the struggle to save mankind from absolutism; every citizen- 
soldier who has given years and sufferings to that cause; every gold- 
star mother or maimed veteran, will agree that peace is preferable 
to war. and that to train a world in the ways of peace is better than 
to prepare it for war. I would not have you misconstrue. I believe 
it wholly consistent to preach peace and its triumphs in that con- 
vincing sincerity which an unselfish nation commands and yet make 
sure about our proper defense. 

Manifestly, mankind is disposed to try that experiment. If, trying 
it, nations shall fail, it will be no fault of the United States of 
America. AA T e are ready to offer a helping hand in the new path. 
We have tendered our invitation, and the cordial acceptance which 
has come from every quarter leads to earnest hope for good results. 
AA'e Americans have learned the lesson, on both the national and world 
scale. AA'e fought our war of sections and systems, and decided for- 
ever in favor of peace and unity. Our own experience lias taught 
us that we may hope that a like decision will be reached by a world 
reasoning amid (lie convictions which follow in the wake of a tragedy 
supreme. 

It should not be needful for me to repeat that, in whatever contri- 
bution we can make to the establishment of a better order, we shall 



8 

not surrender any of our national independence. America will \>r 
for America first; l>nt it will never be a merely selfish America, 
imagining to prosper by the misfortunes of others. It will .stand 
for tii<- cooperations, 1 1 »* - mutual helpfulness, the wide perceptions 
which mankind needs to cheer and speed it on the way to the brighter 
ami better realm of peace restored ami effectively assured, of progn 
Lined, and righteous aspirations impelling ever greater achiei 
ments and ever higher attainments. 



